Earls Court project: opposition, localism and two Hong Kong arrests

It's just over a fortnight since publication of a news feature I wrote about the campaign by residents of two estates in the Conservative flagship borough of Hammersmith and Fulham to prevent their homes being sold to property developer Capco for demolition as part of the giant Earls Court project - a redevelopment scheme that would also entail the destruction of the two Earls court exhibition centres and result in nearly 80 acres of inner west London being transformed into a high-rise, high-value neighbourhood quite different from the one there now.

In that time, when I've had family and other work matters to attend to, I've been unable to document significant twists in this fraught saga of regeneration and resistance. It is now my breathless duty to bring readers up to date.

The anti-demolition campaigners have been making optimistic noises for three reasons. One is that a piece of national housing legislation, actually introduced by Labour but not brought into effect at the time, is on its way to being activated. This is due to the department for communities and local government putting the necessary regulations out for consultation. Section 34a of the Housing Act (1985) might have been a Labour idea, but the Tory-led government favours it because it fits its "big society" agenda. That's rather ironic, given that Hammersmith and Fulham leader Stephen Greenhalgh has had a big influence on the evolution of Tory local government policies.

Once it's become a functioning bit of law, Section 34a will require local authorities to co-operate with tenants' groups seeking to transfer ownership of council homes and estates to a local housing association, including any they should form and run themselves - which is precisely what the tenants' associations of the two threatened estates, the West Kensington and the Gibbs Green, wish to do. At present, there is no such obligation. The consultation on Section 34a's "right to transfer" regulations continues until the 23 May.

The second reason for good cheer in the "peoples' estates" campaign is the sheer scale of residents' opposition to Hammersmith and Fulham's plan to sell the land the estates stand on to Capco. It says that more than 600 of the forms distributed by the council seeking responses to the proposed deal have been sent back expressing opposition, the vast majority including residents' hand-written views. You can read 558 of those for yourself via here.

On Wednesday the Guardian published a response to my news feature under the name of Maureen Way, who chairs the residents' steering company set up by the council as an alternative consultation forum to the residents associations after it became clear that where they stood. The response says that the group has "about 100 residents" involved. That is many fewer than the number who've told the council they are against demolition, suggesting perhaps that most people living on the estates really have not been persuaded by the council's vision of a new "urban quarter" despite a promise that they would be rehoused within the development area.

A third recent occurrence the campaigners have seized on is the arrest in Hong Kong on suspicion of bribery of two members of the wealthy Kwok family, which has entered into a conditional joint venture agreement with Capco to develop the Earls Court centres' car park in Seagrave Road, an adjunct to the main development area where 800 homes are planned to be built.

The Hammersmith and Fulham Chronicle reports Capco stating that the arrests will not affect the Seagrave Road arrangement, saying that they are "an internal matter for Sun Hung Kai," a company the brothers run. However, Stephen Cowan, who leads the council's opposition Labour group, argues that, "There are serious questions that need to be answered about the financial viability of the whole project."

The arrest of the Kwoks came shortly after Boris Johnson gave a green light to the Seagrave Road part of the scheme by deciding against using his mayoral powers to block or take over the application. Ken Livingstone, by the way, has used a mayoral campaign visit to describe the Earls Court project as illegal.

The Chronicle reported on 26 March that opponents of the full scheme fear that Boris's decision "paves the way" for the rest of the scheme to go ahead and added that the council could sign the land deal relating to the estates this month. However, I'm advised that the deal could not go through without the say so of communities secretary Eric Pickles, who would be expected to take into account the views of residents.

The fascination of this fraught tale of regeneration and resistance is that it distills competing, core beliefs about housing, communities, welfare, economic wellbeing, localism, tenants' rights and the future architectural and social character of London. Greenhalgh is adamant that the Earls Court scheme would be good for the area and for many of the people currently living there. However, several hundred of those living in the West Kensington and Gibbs Green estates' 760 homes plainly don't share his enthusiasm.

Should Tory localism mean the desire of local people to run their own affairs being bulldozed by the wider ambitions of the Tory local state? Discuss.